posted at 1:21 pm on October 3, 2012 by Ed Morrissey

With the Obama White House deep in cover-up mode on the terrorist attack on our consulate in Benghazi, it’s easy to forget that they’re not exactly transparent on the domestic-policy front, either. Senator Jeff Sessions blasted Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano yesterday for ignoring several demands for data on how the administration enforces immigration law. After Napolitano ignored the latest in a series of deadlines for providing the information, Sessions and three other Republican Senators accused the White House of hiding its willful failure to enforce the law:

Senate Budget Committee ranking member Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) said on Tuesday said that the repeated failure of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) to provide Congress with information about whether U.S. immigration laws are being adequately enforced is leading him to conclude that DHS is purposefully hiding details about its relaxed enforcement of these laws. …

Sessions and Sens. Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa), Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) and Pat Roberts (R-Kan.) wrote to DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano in August and again in September to provide information about whether this legal requirement is being carried out. In September, they gave her a new deadline of Oct. 1 to reply, but that date came and went on Monday without any response from DHS.

“Given what we already know, and the otherwise inexplicable refusal for DHS to reply to such a simple inquiry, it necessarily suggests that the executive branch is trying to prevent the public from discovering its failure to follow U.S. immigration and welfare law,” Sessions said Tuesday.

This fight began over the summer, when Barack Obama unilaterally decided to stop enforcing immigration law in certain cases that matched up with the aim of his stalled DREAM Act. Republicans reacted angrily, insisting that the executive branch couldn’t just decide to stop enforcing statutory law passed by Congress on its own whims. Reports immediately began arising that DHS had simply stopped enforcing immigration law altogether, not just in Obama’s DREAM circumstances, but that’s not the big issue here. Sessions and the other Senators want to know whether DHS was encouraging visa applicants to enroll in food-stamp and other federal aid programs, which would violate the Immigration and Nationality Act, which forbids immigrants to enter the US if they are likely to become a “public charge” — welfare dependents, in other words.

In August, Republicans demanded data on a broad range of enforcement questions. Napolitano has stonewalled the Senators for two months, but they have collected information on their own. The Hill spoke to a Sessions aide, who informed them that there doesn’t seem to be any enforcement happening in DHS at all:

This aide told The Hill on Tuesday that the GOP has also learned from the State Department that there were 10 million visa applications in fiscal 2011, and that only 7,000 were denied under the public charge rules. That amounts to a rejection rate of just 0.07 percent, which the aide said seems small given estimates that there are two million visa holders using federal aid programs.

The GOP is also noting a study by the Center for Immigration Studies that said in 2010, 36 percent of “immigrant-headed households” used at least one federal welfare program, significantly more than the 23 percent for citizen-headed households that used these programs. Taken together, Republicans believe that DHS has the data to show that it is allowing people to enter the United States who are likely to use federal programs, but is not sharing it.

With the skyrocketing costs of providing entitlement programs to American citizens, why is DHS encouraging immigrants to stay in the US and enroll in any number of federal-aid programs? Until Napolitano provides answers to Sessions, we won’t know.

Update: Must have had a stray mouse click turn off the comments; I’ve fixed it now.

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This makes me so angry. We spent thousands of dollars in fees and it took years for my wife to obtain her citizenship, “the right way”. On top of that, the USCIS denied my mother in law to come visit and see her new grandson, citing that there is not enough evidence that she wouldn’t stay permanently.

Yet, if you are a special class of immigrant (ie an “undocumented” one), they selectively enforce the law. Are we a nation of laws or not? Why even bother with USCIS and borders, then? Just let everyone in. Why are border control agents getting murdered?

the GOP has also learned from the State Department that there were 10 million visa applications in fiscal 2011, and that only 7,000 were denied under the public charge rules. That amounts to a rejection rate of just 0.07 percent, which the aide said seems small given estimates that there are two million visa holders using federal aid programs.

Saw the movie Looper last night. Got a growing list of administration officials I wouldn’t mind seeing get sent back to their white tarp in the middle of a corn field. Figuratively speaking, of course!

And the only document that can prove Employment Eligibility for the office of President (which, per the U.S. Constitution, requires that one be not only a citizen but also a natural born citizen) is an

Original or certified copy of birth certificate issued by a State, county, municipal authority, or territory of the United States bearing an official seal

The burden of proof is on Obama. He is not above the law, and MUST complete a Form I-9, Employment Eligibility Verification and provide HARDCOPY documentation. And the eligibility requirements for his employment are more stringent for President (natural born citizen) than they were for Senator (citizen).

A Republic is ruled by the Rule of Law.

If you care about the survival of our Republic, you support and defend the Constitution and the Rule of Law.

And guess what? Regardless of how you think “natural born citizen” should be defined, Obama has not proven that he is in compliance with current immigration law: the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986. Where is his Form I-9? Where is the HARDCOPY documentation, submitted TO HIS EMPLOYER for review?

Is the President above the law?

There are no exceptions made for government employees in the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986.

All means all.
Must means must.

The President is a government employee who is paid a salary. All means all. Must means must. No exceptions.

Foreign aid has been increased by around 80% since Obama became President. There doesn’t appear to be any clear reasoning behind this vast increase in foreign aid, particularly when this nation is suffering the lowest workforce participation rate since WWII, and is currently running DEFICITS of over $1Trillion/year under Obama, which is being borrowed from abroad.

The borders are essentially wide open despite assertions to the contrary from Napolitano. The fact that aliens can travel back and forth across the border virtually unimpeded to visit family or conduct any other business they may have there, including drug cartels, is proof enough.

Obama’s administration has met with Mexican governmental officials at least 30 times regarding our food stamp program and welfare programs in an effort to be certain that access to those programs is readily available and easy to obtain for Mexican immigrants. The opportunity for an immigrant who enters this nation on a work visa or visitors visa to simply sign up for those programs and then fail to either renew the visa or leave the nation at the appointed time is substantial.

This nation is locked in a debate regarding how to afford to provide for citizens and legal immigrants as it is. We cannot afford to support those who would come to this nation simply to sign up for those welfare programs offered by the federal government.

Now, through the efforts of Sen. Sessions and others, we learn that DHS has effectively abandoned any effort to see that immigrants issues visas are self supporting and will not become a burden to the nation.

It is my sincere hope that Ms. Napolitano, and those complicit with her, including the President, are held accountable, that congress will pursue these issues, and that, if any wrongdoing can be proven, those culpable are tried and imprisoned.

That dictatorial regime running the administrative branch of government is destroying our Constitutional government. If they don’t like a law, they ignore it and if the can’t get a law passed they publish an Executive Order and decree it. This is a one branch government and the “great patriots” in the Senate, House and Supreme Court do absolutely nothing. Somebody had better start making a lot of noise lest Obama become emperor by default.

Just business as usual for Dear Leader: re-distributing the unearned and undeserved wealth of greedy, over-privileged Americans to the more deserving and noble Third World poor.

Remember, white man’s greed runs a world in need. Or at least it did before Lightworker Barry Hussein Obama arrived in the White House to set things right and compensate all the oppressed brown peoples of the world for all the horrors wreaked upon them by the evil white man.

I seriously think it’s time to reinstitute the special prosecutor because the Administration just ignores Congress, and they don’t have the power or the will to do anything about these things. You can say what you want about Newt Gingrich, but he NEVER would let them get away with this and all the other crimes.